Chapter V

THE FOUNDER OF THE BANKSIAN MUSEUM AND LIBRARY.

‘It may be averred for truth that they be not the highest instances
that give the best and surest information.... It often comes to pass
[in the study of Nature] that small and mean things conduce more to
the discovery of great matters, than great things to the discovery of
small matters.’—BACON.

‘Not every man is fit to travel. Travel makes a wise man better, but a
fool worse.’—OWEN FELLTHAM.

_The Life, Travels, and Social Influence, of Sir Joseph_ BANKS.—_The
Royal Society under his Presidency.—His Collections and their
acquisition by the Trustees of the British Museum.—Notices of some
other contemporaneous accessions._

[Sidenote: BOOK II, Chap. V. THE FOUNDER OF THE BANKSIAN MUSEUM AND
LIBRARY.]

We have now to glance at the career—personal and scientific—of an estimable public benefactor, with whom King GEORGE THE THIRD had much pleasant intercourse, both of a public and a private kind. Sir Joseph BANKS was almost five years younger than his royal friend and correspondent, but he survived the King by little more than three months, so that the Georgian and the Banksian Libraries were very nearly contemporaneous accessions. The former, as we have seen, was given in 1823, and fully received in 1828; the latter was bequeathed (conditionally) in 1820, and received in 1827. These two accessions, taken conjointly, raised the Museum collection of books (for the first time in its history) to a respectable rank amongst the National Libraries of the day. The Banksian bequest made also an important addition to the natural-history collections, especially to the herbaria. It is as a cultivator and promoter of the natural sciences, and pre-eminently of botany, that Sir Joseph won for himself enduring fame. But he was also conspicuous for those personal and social qualities which are not less necessary to the man, than are learning and liberality to the philosopher. For the lack of such personal qualities some undoubted public benefactors have been, nevertheless, bad citizens. In this public benefactor both sets of faculties were harmoniously combined. They shone in his form and countenance. They yet dwell in the memory of a survivor or two, here and there, who were the contemporaries of his closing years.

Joseph BANKS was born at Reresby Abbey, in Lincolnshire, on the thirteenth of December, 1743. He was the only son of William BANKS-HODGKENSON, of Reresby ABBEY, by his wife Sophia BATE.

[Sidenote: THE BANKESES OF RERESBY ABBEY.]

Mr. BANKS-HODGKENSON was the descendant of a Yorkshire family, which was wont, of old, to write itself ‘Banke,’ and was long settled at Banke-Newton, in the wapentake of Staincliffe. The second son of a certain Henry BANKE, of Banke-Newton, acquired, by marriage, Beck Hall, in Giggleswick; and by his great-grandson, the first Joseph BANKES, Reresby Abbey was purchased towards the close of the seventeenth century. His son (also Joseph) sat in Parliament for Peterborough, and served as Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1736. The second (and eldest surviving) son of the Member for Peterborough took the name of HODGKENSON, as heir to his mother’s ancestral estate of Overton, in Derbyshire, but on the death of his elder brother (and his consequent heirship) resumed the paternal name, and resigned the Overton estate to his next brother, who became Robert HODGKENSON, of Overton. Mr. BANKS-HODGKENSON died in 1761, leaving to his son, afterwards Sir Joseph BANKS, a plentiful estate.

The youngster was then little more than beginning his career at Oxford, whither he had recently come from Eton, though his schooling had been begun at Harrow. [Sidenote: EARLY YEARS OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS.] He was ‘lord of himself,’ and of a fine fortune, at the critical age of eighteen. To many, such an inheritance, under like circumstances, has brought misery. To Joseph BANKS, it brought noble means for the prosecution of a noble aim. It was the ambition of this young Etonian—not to eclipse jockies, or to dazzle the eyes of fools, but—to tread in the footsteps of LINNÆUS. Rich, hardy, and handsome in person, sanguine in temperament, and full of talent, he resolved that, for some years to come, after leaving the University, the life that might so easily be brimmed with enjoyments should incur many privations and face many hardships, in order to win both knowledge and the power of benefiting the Public by its communication. That object of early ambition, it will be seen, was abundantly realised in the after-years.

There is no reason to think that a resolution, not often formed at such an age as eighteen, was come to in the absence of temptation to a different course. BANKS was no ascetic. Nor was it his fortune, at any time, to live much with ascetics. One of his earliest friends was that Lord SANDWICH[19] whose memory now chiefly connects itself with the unsavoury traditions of Medmenham Abbey, and with the peculiar pursuits in literature of John WILKES. With SANDWICH he spent many of the bright days of youth in fishing on Whittlesea Mere. BANKS had the good fortune—and the skill—to make his early acquaintanceship with the future First Lord of the Admiralty conducive to the interests of science. The connexion with the Navy of another friend of his youth, Henry PHIPPS, afterwards Earl of MULGRAVE, was also turned, eventually, to good account in the same way.

Part of young BANKS’ vacations were passed at Reresby and in frequent companionship with Lord SANDWICH; part at his mother’s jointure-house at Chelsea, very near to the fine botanic garden which, a few years before, had been so much enriched by the liberality of Sir Hans SLOANE. In that Chelsea garden, and in other gardens at Hammersmith, BANKS studied botany with youthful ardour. And he made frequent botanic excursions in the then secluded neighbourhood. In the course of one of these rambles he fell under suspicion of felony.

[Sidenote: BANKS’ YOUTHFUL ADVENTURE NEAR HAMMERSMITH.]

He was botanizing in a ditch, and his person happened to be partially concealed by a thick growth of briars and nettles, at a moment when two or three constables, who were in chase of a burglar, chanced to approach the spot. The botanist’s clothes were in a miry condition, and his suspicious posture excited in the minds of the local Dogberries the idea that here they had their man. They were deaf to all expostulations. The future President of the Royal Society was dragged, by ignominious hands, before the nearest justice. The magistrate agreed with the constables that the case looked black, but, before committing either the prisoner or himself, he directed that the culprit’s pockets should be searched. They contained little money, and no watches; but an extraordinary abundance of plants and wild flowers. The explanations which before had been refused were now accepted, and very courteous apologies were tendered to the victim of an excess of official zeal. But the awkwardness of the adventure failed to deter the sufferer from his eager pursuit, in season and out of it, of his darling science. A botanist he was to be.

He left Oxford in 1763, and almost instantly set out on a scientific voyage to Newfoundland and Labrador. [Sidenote: THE FIRST VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION TO NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR.] Here he laid the first substantial groundwork of his future collections in natural history. He sailed with PHIPPS, who was already a captain in the Navy, and had been charged with the duty of protecting the Newfoundland fisheries. [Sidenote: 1763.] The voyage proved to be one of some hardship, but its privations rather sharpened than dulled the youthful naturalist’s appetite for scientific explorations. He had learned thus early to endure hardness, for a worthy object.

[Sidenote: THE SECOND VOYAGE;—TO THE SOUTH SEAS.]

His second voyage was to the South Seas, and it was made in company with the most famous of the large band of eighteenth century maritime discoverers—James COOK, [Sidenote: 1768.] and also with a favourite pupil of LINNÆUS (the idol of BANKS’ youthful fancy), Daniel Charles SOLANDER, who, though he was little above thirty years of age, had already won some distinction in England, and had been made an Assistant-Librarian in the British Museum.[20]

To make the voyage of _The Endeavour_ as largely conducive as was possible to the interests of the natural sciences, Mr. BANKS incurred considerable personal expense, and he induced the Admiralty to make large efforts, on its part, to promote and secure the various objects of the new expedition. One of those objects was the observation at Otaheite of a coming transit of Venus over the Sun; another was the further progress of geographical discovery in a quarter of the world to which public interest was at that time specially and strongly turned. BANKS, individually, was also bent on collecting specimens in all departments of natural history, and on promoting geographical knowledge by the completest possible collection of drawings, maps, and charts of all that was met with. He engaged Dr. SOLANDER as his companion, and gave him a salary of four hundred pounds a year. With them sailed two draughtsmen and a secretary, besides four servants.

[Sidenote: THE BOTANICAL EXPLORATIONS AT TERRA-DEL-FUEGO.]

_The Endeavour_ set sail from Plymouth on the twenty-sixth of August, 1768, and from Rio-de-Janeiro on the eighth of December. [Sidenote: 1769. January.] On the fourteenth of January, 1769, the naturalists landed at Terra-del-Fuego, and they gathered more than a hundred plants theretofore unknown to European botanists. Proud of their success, they resolved that, after a brief rest, they would explore the higher regions, in hope to reap a rich harvest of Alpine plants. SOLANDER, as a Swede and as a traveller in Norway, knew something of the dangers they would have to face. BANKS himself was not without experience. But both were enterprising and resolute men. They set out on their long march in the night of the fifteenth of January, in order to gain as much of daylight as possible for the work of botanizing. They hoped to return to the ship within ten hours. As they ascended, SOLANDER warned his companions against the temptation that he knew awaited them of giving way to sleep when overcome by the toil of walking. ‘Whoever sits down,’ said he, ‘will be sure to sleep, and whoever sleeps will wake no more.’ But the fatigue proved to be excessive. The foreseeing adviser was borne down by it, and was the first to throw himself upon the snow. BANKS was the younger man by six or seven years, and had a strong constitution. He fought resolutely against temptation, and, with the help of the draughtsmen, exerted himself with all his might to keep SOLANDER awake. They succeeded in getting him to walk on for a few miles more. Then he lay down again, with the words, ‘Sleep I must, for a few minutes.’ In those few minutes the fierce cold almost paralysed his limbs. Two servants (a seaman and a negro) imitated the Swede’s example, and were really paralysed. With much grief, it was found that the servants must, inevitably, be left to their fate. The party had wandered so far that when they set about to return they were—if the return should be by the way they had come—a long day’s journey from the ship. And their route had lain through pathless woods. Their only food was a vulture. A third man seemed in peril—momentarily—of death by exhaustion. Happily, a shorter cut was found. Their journey had not been quite fruitless. But they all felt that they had bought their botanical specimens at too dear a rate. Two men were already dead. One of the draughtsmen seems to have suffered so severely that he never recovered from the effects of the journey. Mr. BUCHAN died, three months afterwards, in Otaheite, just four days after they had landed in the celebrated island, to visit which was among the especial objects of their mission.

[Sidenote: THE STAY IN OTAHEITE.]

The transit of Venus over the Sun’s disc was satisfactorily observed on the third of June, [Sidenote: 1769.] but the observation had been nearly foiled by the roguery of a native, who had carried off the quadrant. The thief was found amongst several hundred of his fellows, and, but for a characteristic combination in BANKS of frank good humour and of firm hardihood, the spoil would not have been recovered. On this, as upon many other occasions, both his fine personal qualities and his genial manners marked him as a natural leader of men. On occasions, however, of a more delicate kind they brought him into a peculiar peril. Queen OBEREA fell in love with him. She was not herself without attractions. And they were clad in all the graces of unadorned simplicity. The poetical satirists of his day used Sir Joseph—after his return—with cruel injustice if he was really quite so successful, in resisting feminine charms in Otaheite, as he had formerly been at home.

[Sidenote: THE VOYAGE TO NEW HOLLAND.]

But however that may have been, his researches, as a naturalist, at Otaheite were abundantly successful. And to the island, in return, he was a friend and benefactor. [Sidenote: 1769–1770.] After a stay of three months the explorers left Otaheite for New Holland on the 15th of August, 1769. In Australia their collections were again very numerous and valuable. But their long stay in explorations exposed them to two great dangers, each of which was very nearly fatal to Mr. BANKS and to most of his companions. They struck upon a rock, while coasting New South Wales. Their escape was wonderful. The accident entailed an amount of injury to the ship which brought them presently within a peril more imminent still. Whilst making repairs in the noxious climate of Batavia, a pestilence seized upon nearly all the Europeans. Seven, including the ship’s surgeon, died in Batavia. Twenty-three, including the second draughtsman, Mr. PARKINSON, died on shipboard afterwards. BANKS and SOLANDER were so near death that their recovery seemed, to their companions, almost miraculous.

[Sidenote: THE RETURN HOME.]

After leaving New South Wales and Batavia they had a prosperous passage [Sidenote: 1771. June.] to the Cape—prosperous, save for the loss of those whom the pestilence had previously stricken—and made some additions to their scientific stores. _The Endeavour_ anchored in the Downs on the 12th of June, 1771, after an absence of nearly three years. Beyond the immediate and obvious scientific results of the voyage, it was the means, eventually, of conferring an eminent benefaction on our West Indian Colonies. It gave them the Bread-Fruit tree (_Artocarpus incisa_). The transplantation of GOD’S bounties from clime to clime was a favourite pursuit—and a life-long one—with Sir Joseph BANKS, and its agencies cost him much time and thought, as well as no small expenditure of fortune.

The hardships and sufferings of Terra-del-Fuego and of Batavia had not yet taken off the edge of his appetite for remote voyages. [Sidenote: THE EXPEDITION TO ICELAND.] He expended some thousands of pounds in buying instruments and making preparations for a new expedition with COOK, [Sidenote: 1772. July.] but the foolish and obstructive conduct of our Navy Board inspired him with a temporary disgust. He then turned his attention to Northern Europe. He resolved that after visiting the western isles of Scotland he would explore Iceland. SOLANDER was again his companion, together with two other northern naturalists, Drs. LIND and VON TROIL. BANKS chartered a vessel at his own cost (amounting, for the ship alone, to about six hundred pounds).

Before starting for the cold north, they refreshed their eyes with the soft beauties of the Isle of Wight. There, said one of the delighted party, ‘Nature has spared none of her favours;’ and a good many of us have unconsciously repeated his remark, long afterwards. They reached the Western Isles of Scotland before the end of July, and, after a long visit, explored Staffa, the wonders of which were then almost unknown. Scientific attention, indeed, was first called to them by BANKS, when he communicated to Thomas PENNANT, of Downing, his minute survey, and his drawings of the basaltic columns.

He thought that the mind can scarcely conceive of anything more splendid, in its kind, than the now famous cave. [Sidenote: THE VISIT TO STAFFA.] When he asked the local name of it, his guide gave him an answer which, to Mr. BANKS, seemed to need explanation, [Sidenote: 1772. August 12.] though the name has nowadays become but too familiar to our ears. ‘The Cave of FIUHN,’ said the islander. ‘Who or what is “Fiuhn”?’ rejoined BANKS. The stone, he says, of which the pillars are formed, is a coarse kind of basalt, much resembling the ‘Giants’ Causeway’ in Ireland, ‘though none of them so neat as the specimens of the latter which I have seen at the British Museum.... [Sidenote: Banks to Pennant; Aug., 1772.] Here, it is dirty brown; in the Irish, a fine black.’ But he carried away with him the fullest impression of the amazing grandeur of the whole scene.

[Sidenote: THE TOUR IN ICELAND.]

The tourists reached Iceland on the twenty-eighth of August. They explored the country, and saw everything notable which it contained. On the twenty-first of September they visited the most conspicuous of the _geysers_, or hot-springs, and spent thirteen hours in examining them. On the twenty-fourth, they explored Mount Hecla.

The most famous geyser described by VON TROIL (who acted usually as penman for the party) was situate near a farm called Harkaudal, about two days’ journey from Hecla. You see, he tells us, a large expanse of fields shut in, upon one side, by lofty snow-covered mountains, far away, with their heads commonly shrouded in clouds, that occasionally sink (under the force of a prevalent wind) so as to conceal the slopes, while displaying the peaks. The peaks, at such moments, seem to spring out of the clouds themselves. On another hand, Hecla is seen, with its three ice-capped summits, and its volcanic vapours; and then, again, a ridge of stupendous rocks, at the foot of which the boiling springs gush forth, with deafening roar, and are backed by a broad marsh containing forty or fifty other springs, or ‘geysers,’ from which arise immense columns of vapour, subject of course to all the influences and lightings-up of wind and sky. Our tourists carefully watched the ‘spoutings’ of the springs—which are always fitful—and, according to their joint observations, some of these rose to the height of sixty feet. [Sidenote: Von Troil to Bergmann; 7 Sept., 1773. (Abridged.)] Occasionally—it has since been observed by later explorers—they reach to an elevation of more than three times that number of feet.

Nor did Mr. BANKS neglect the literature of Iceland, which abounds with interest. He bought the Library of Halfdan EINARSSON, the literary historian of Iceland, and made other large and choice collections. And he presented the whole to the British Museum—after bestowing, I believe, some personal study on their contents—upon his return to England at the close of the year.

[Sidenote: SOCIAL POSITION AND INFLUENCE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS.]

For many generations, it has been very conducive to the possession of social prestige in this country that a man should have acquired the reputation of an adventurous traveller. Even if the traveller shall have seen no anthropophagi, no men ‘whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,’ he is likely to attain to some degree of social eminence, merely as one who has explored those

‘Antres vast and desarts idle,’

of which home-keeping people have no knowledge, save from the tales of voyagers. To prestige of this kind, Mr. BANKS added respectable scientific attainments, a large fortune, and a liberal mind. He was also the favoured possessor of graceful manners and of no mean powers of conversation. It was, therefore, quite in the ordinary course of things that his house in London should become one of the social centres of the metropolis. It became much more than that. From the days of his youth BANKS had seen much of foreigners; he had mixed with men of European distinction. An extensive correspondence with the Continent became to him both a pursuit and an enjoyment, and one of its results, in course of time, was that at his house in Soho Square every eminent foreigner who came to England was sure to be seen. To another class of persons that house became scarcely less distinguished as the abode, not only of the rich Collections in natural history which their owner had gone so far to seek, and had gathered with so much toil and hardship, but of a noble Library, for the increase of which the book-shops of every great town in Europe had been explored.

[Sidenote: THE ROYAL SOCIETY, AND ITS HISTORY UNDER THE RULE OF SIR
JOSEPH BANKS.]

The possessor of such manifold distinctions and of such habits of mind seemed, to most men, marked out as the natural head of a great scientific institution. Such a man would be sure to reflect honour on the Society, as well as to derive honour from his headship. But at this particular epoch the Royal Society (then the one conspicuous scientific association in the kingdom) was much embroiled. Mr. BANKS was, in many respects, just the man to assuage dissensions. But these particular dissensions were of a kind which his special devotion to natural history tended rather to aggravate than to soften.

Mathematicians, as all men know, have been illustrious benefactors to the world, but—be the cause what it may—they have never been famous for a large-minded estimate of the pursuits and hobbies of other men, whom Nature had not made mathematical. At the time when Joseph BANKS leaped—as one may say—into eminence, both scientific and social, in London, Sir John PRINGLE was President of the Royal Society, and his position there somewhat resembled the position in which we have seen Sir Hans SLOANE to have been placed. [Sidenote: See before, Book I, c. 6.] Like Sir Hans, PRINGLE was an eminent physician, and a keen student of physics. He did not give umbrage to his scientific team, exactly in the way in which SLOANE had given it—by an overweening love of reading long medical papers. But natural, not mathematical, philosophy, was his forte; and the mathematicians were somewhat uneasy in the traces whilst Sir John held the reins. If PRINGLE should be succeeded by BANKS, there would be a change indeed on the box, but the style of coachmanship was likely to be little altered. It is not surprising that there should have been a good deal of jibbing, just as the change was at hand, and also for some time after it had been made.

[Sidenote: THE ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY.]

Mr. BANKS was elected to the chair of the Royal Society on the 30th of November, 1777. He found it to be a very difficult post. [Sidenote: 1777. 30 Nov.] But, in the end, the true geniality of the man, the integrity of his nature, and the suavity of his manners, won over most, if not quite all, of his opponents. The least that can be said of his rule in that chair is that he made the Royal Society more famous throughout Europe, than it had ever been since the day when it was presided over by NEWTON.

For it was not the least eminent quality of BANKS’ character that, to him, a touch of _science_ ‘made the whole world kin.’ He was a good subject, as well as a good man. He knew the blessings of an aristocratic and time-honoured monarchy. He had that true insight which enables a man to discriminate sharply between the populace and the People. But, when the interests of science came into play, he could say—with literal and exactest truth,—

‘Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine agetur.’

He took a keen and genial delight both in watching and in promoting the progress of science on the other side of the Channel, whether France itself lay under the loose rule of the republican and dissolute Directory, or under the curbing hand of the First Consul, who was already rapidly aspiring towards empire.

On ten several occasions, BANKS was the means of inducing our Government to restore scientific collections, which had been captured by British cruisers, to that magnificent Botanic Garden (the _Jardin des Plantes_, at Paris) for which they had been originally destined. [Sidenote: Cuvier, _Éloge de M. Banks_, passim.] Such conduct could not but win for him the affectionate reverence of Frenchmen. On one eminent occasion his good services went much further.

[Sidenote: BANKS’ INTERVENTION WITH RESPECT TO SOME OF THE FRUITS OF THE
EXPEDITION OF LA PÉROUSE.]

Men yet remember the European interest excited by the adventurous expedition and the sad fate of the gallant seaman, John Francis DE LA PÉROUSE. When the long search for LA PÉROUSE, which had been headed by the French Admiral BRUNI D’EUTRECASTEAUX, came by discords to an untimely end, the collection of specimens of natural history which had been made, in the course of it, by DE LA BILLARDIÈRE, was brought into an English port. The commander, it seems, felt much as SLOANE’S captain[21] had felt at the time of our own Revolution of 1688. From LEWIS THE SIXTEENTH he had received his commission. He was unprepared to yield an account of its performance to anybody else. He brought his cargo to England, and placed it at the absolute disposal of the French emigrant Princes.

By the eldest Prince, afterwards LEWIS THE EIGHTEENTH, directions were given that an offer should be made to Queen CHARLOTTE to place at Her Majesty’s disposal whatever she might be pleased to select from the Collections of LA BILLARDIÈRE, and that all the remainder of them should be given to the British Museum.

To the interests of that Museum no man of sense will think that Sir Joseph BANKS was, at any time, indifferent. At this particular time, he had been, repeatedly, an eminent benefactor to it. By the French Prince the Collections were put at his orders for the advantage of the Museum, of which he was now a Trustee, as well as a benefactor. But his first thought was for the national honour of Britain, not for the mere aggrandizement of its Museum. ‘I have never heard,’ said BANKS, ‘of any declaration of war between the philosophers of England and the philosophers of France. These French Collections must go to the French Museum, not to the British.’ And to France he sent them, without a moment’s hesitation. Such an act, I take it, is worthy of the name of ‘cosmopolitanism.’ The bastard imitation, sometimes current under that much abused term—that which knows of no love of country, except upon a clear balance of mercantile profit—might be more fitly called by a plainer word.

[Sidenote: INSTANCES OF BANKS’ LIBERALITY TO HUMBOLDT.]

Nor were Frenchmen the only persons to benefit by the largeness of view which belonged to the new President of the Royal Society. At a later period, he heard that Collections which had been made by William VON HUMBOLDT, and subsequently seized by pirates, had been carried to the Cape, and there detained. BANKS sent to the Cape a commission for their release, and restoration to the Collector. He defrayed the expenses, and refused to accept of any reimbursement. Such actions might well reflect honour on the Royal Society, as well as on the man whom the wisest among its fellows had placed at their head.

The Royal Society had but a share of its President’s attention, though the share was naturally a Benjamin’s portion. He worked assiduously on the Board of Agriculture. He helped to found the Horticultural Society and the Royal Institution of London. He became, also, in 1788, a co-founder of that ‘African Institution’ which contributed so largely, in the earlier years of this century, to promote geographical discovery in Africa, and to spread—of dire necessity, at but a snail’s pace—some of the blessings of Christian civilization to those dark places of the earth which are full of cruelty.

BANKS’ close intercourse with the Continent enabled him to do yeoman’s service to the African Institution. Many ardent and aspiring young men in all parts of Europe were fired, from time to time, with an ambition to do some stroke or other of good work in an enterprise which was, at once, scientific and, in its ultimate issues, evangelical. Some of the aspirants were, of course, but very partially fitted or equipped for such labours. But among those who entered on it with fairest promise the protégés of BANKS were conspicuous. Some brief notice of the services he was enabled to render in this direction belongs, however, more fitly, to a somewhat later date than that at which we have, as yet, arrived.

[Sidenote: BANKS’ FAVOURABLE RECEPTION AT THE COURT OF GEORGE III.]

Among the Fellows of the Royal Society there had been much division of opinion as to the eligibility of Joseph BANKS for their Presidency. At Court, there was none. GEORGE THE THIRD, with all his genuine good nature, had been unable to restrain a lurking dislike of Sir John PRINGLE’S friendly intercourse with Benjamin FRANKLIN. He was pleased to see PRINGLE retire to his native Scotland, and to receive BANKS at Court, in Sir John’s place. He did not then anticipate that the new President would, one day, offend (for a moment) his irrepressible prejudices in a somewhat like manner.

Sometimes, Sir Joseph’s attendance at Court brought him into company which had become to him, in some degree, unwonted. We have seen him making a very favourable impression in the feminine circles at Otaheite. But the ladies in attendance on Queen CHARLOTTE were less charmed with him. In March, 1788, I find Fanny BURNEY diarizing (at Windsor Castle) thus:—‘Sir Joseph BANKS was so exceedingly shy that we made no acquaintance at all. If, instead of going round the world, he had only fallen from the moon, he could not appear less versed in the usual modes of a tea-drinking party. [Sidenote: D’Arblay, _Diary_, vol. iv, p. 128.] But what, you will say, has a tea-party to do with a botanist, a man of science, and a President of the Royal Society?’

In March, 1779, Mr. BANKS made a happy marriage with Dorothea HUGESSEN, daughter and coheir of William Weston HUGESSEN, of Provender, in Kent. Two years afterwards, the King made him a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and cultivated his familiar and frequent acquaintance both in town and at Windsor. Ere long, he was still further honoured with the rank of a Privy Councillor. Both men were deeply interested in agriculture and in the improvement of stock. Sir Joseph shared his sovereign’s liking for the Merino breeds; took an active part in managing those in Windsor Park, and for many years presided, very successfully, over the annual sales. The King had been willing to give away his surplus stock, for the mere sake of promoting improvement, but he was made to see that more good was likely to accrue from sales than from gifts. When in Lincolnshire Sir Joseph BANKS laboured hard for the more complete drainage of the fens, and in many ways furthered the introduction of sound agricultural methods. He was a good neighbour; though not a very keen sportsman. And most of his time was now necessarily passed either in London or in its neighbourhood. But, among other acts of good fellowship, he rarely visited Reresby Abbey without patronising a picnic ball at Horncastle, for the benefit of the public dispensary of that town. And it was noted by Lincolnshire people that when, in the after-years, Sir Joseph’s severe sufferings from gout kept him much away from Reresby, the dispensary suffered also—from depletion—until Mr. DYMOKE, of Scrivelsby, had revived, after BANKS’ example, the good old annual custom of the town.

[Sidenote: THE AFRICAN INSTITUTION.]

It was in the year 1797, and again in 1806, that Sir Joseph was enabled to render special service to that African enterprise which lay near his heart, by enlisting in its toils a zealous German and a not less zealous Swiss—Frederick HORNEMANN and John Lewis BURCKHARDT. It was the fate of both of those enterprising men to pay the usual penalty of African exploration. HORNEMANN succumbed, after six years’ service. BURCKHARDT was spared to work for ten years. Some among the minor scientific results of his well-known travels are preserved in the Public Library at Cambridge (to which he bequeathed his manuscripts). Others of them are in the British Museum. The latter would deserve record in these pages, were it now practicable. BURCKHARDT died at Cairo on the seventeenth of October, 1817, just eleven years after his arrival in London, from Göttingen, with that letter to Sir Joseph BANKS in his pocket which, under Divine Providence, determined his work in life. Another great public service of a like kind, rendered by Sir Joseph BANKS to his country and to mankind, was his zealous encouragement of explorations in Australia.

Meanwhile, a new outburst of discord in the Royal Society arose out of a well-merited honour conferred on its President by the Institute of France, in 1802. It was inevitable that a body so eminent and illustrious as the French Institute should not only feel gratitude to Sir Joseph BANKS for that liberality of spirit which had dictated, in the midst of war, his many gracious and generous acts of service to Frenchmen, but should long since have reached the conviction that they would be honouring themselves, not less than honouring him, by his reception in their midst. [Sidenote: HIS ELECTION INTO THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.] During the momentary lull afforded by the Peace of Amiens—when the Institute was reorganized by the hand of the great man who was proud of its badge of fellowship, even when clad in the dalmatica—they placed BANKS at the head of their eight Foreign Members. BANKS’ estimate of the honour of membership was much like NAPOLEON’S. ‘I consider this mark of your esteem,’ said BANKS, in his reply, ‘the highest and most enviable literary distinction which I could possibly attain. To be the first elected as an Associate of the first Literary Society in the world surpasses my most ambitious hopes.’

Several Fellows of the Royal Society resented these warm acknowledgments. [Sidenote: _Letter of Misogallus_, 1802 (privately printed).] They thought them both unpatriotic, and uncomplimentary to themselves. The mathematical malcontents, with Bishop HORSLEY at their head, eagerly profited by so favourable an opportunity of renewing the expression of their old and still lurking dissatisfaction with the choice of their President. HORSLEY addressed to Sir Joseph a letter of indignant and angry remonstrance. Somewhat discreditably, the Bishop chose a pseudonymous signature instead of manfully affixing his own. ‘_Misogallus_’[22] was the mask under which he made an appeal to those anti-Gallican prejudices which so many of us imbibe almost with our mother’s milk, and have in after-years to get rid of. He aimed a poisoned dart at his old antagonist, when pointing one of his many passionate sentences in a way which he knew would arrest the special attention of the King. The shaft hit the mark. But the King was presently appeased. He knew BANKS, and he knew the Bishop of St. Asaph.

[Sidenote: SIR JOSEPH BANKS AS AN AUTHOR.]

From time to time Sir Joseph BANKS contributed many interesting articles to the _Philosophical Transactions_, and to the _Annals of Agriculture_. His able paper on the Blight in Wheat did service in its day, and was separately published. But it is not as an author that this illustrious man will be remembered. He knew how to fructify the thoughts and to disseminate the wisdom of minds more largely gifted than his own. Necessarily, space and prominence in the public eye is—more especially after a man’s death—a good deal determined by authorship. Hence, in our _Biographical Dictionaries_, a crowd of small writers occupy a disproportionate place, and some true and illustrious public benefactors remain almost unnoticed. Undeniably, the fame of one such benefactor as a Joseph BANKS ought to outweigh, and must, intrinsically, outweigh, that of many scores of minor penmen. His benefactions were world-wide. And by them he, being dead, yet speaks, and will long continue to speak, to very good and lofty purpose. He died in London on the ninth of May, 1820, at the venerable age of eighty-one years completed.

He died without issue, and was succeeded in his chief Lincolnshire estates by the Honourable James Hamilton STANHOPE (afterwards Mr. STANHOPE BANKS), and by Sir Henry HAWLEY. [Sidenote: DEATH.] [Sidenote: BEQUESTS.] His Kentish estates were bequeathed to Sir Edward KNATCHBULL.

[Sidenote: _Will and Codicils_, Jan. 7 and 21; and March 7, 1820.]

His Library, Herbarium, Manuscripts, Drawings, Engravings, and all his other subsisting Collections, he bequeathed to the Trustees of the British Museum, for public use for ever, subject to a life-use and a life-interest in them which, together with an annuity, he specifically bequeathed to the eminent botanist, Robert BROWN, who was, for many years, both his friend and his librarian. He also gave an annuity of three hundred pounds a year to Mr. BAUER, an eminent botanical draughtsman; and he added, largely, to the innumerable benefactions he had made in his lifetime to the Botanical Gardens at Kew. To Mr. BROWN he also left the use, for life, of his town house in Soho Square, subject to the life-interest, or the voluntary concession, of the testator’s widow.

In his first Codicil, Sir Joseph BANKS made a proviso that, if it should be the desire of the Trustees of the British Museum—and if that desire should also receive the approval of Mr. BROWN—the life-possessor should be at full liberty to cause the Collections to be transferred to the Museum during his lifetime. That, in fact, was the course which, by mutual consent, was eventually taken, to the manifest advantage of the British Public and the promotion of Science.

Part of Sir Joseph’s personal Manuscripts were bequeathed to the Royal Society; another portion to the British Museum; and a third portion (connected with the Coinage of the Realm) to the Royal Mint. A minor part of his Collections in Natural History had been given to the British Museum in his own lifetime, [Sidenote: OTHER BEQUESTS.] and he had personally superintended their selection and arrangement. He had also been a benefactor to the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow, to the Museum of the London College of Surgeons, and to that, also in London, formerly known as ‘Bullock’s Museum.’ He was, throughout life, as eager to give, as he was diligent to get.

[Sidenote: THE TRANSFER OF THE BANKSIAN COLLECTIONS TO THE MUSEUM.]

About the year 1825, negotiations were opened by the Trustees of the British Museum with Mr. Robert BROWN, with the view of obtaining for the Public the immediate use of the Banksian Library and the other Collections, and, along with them, the public services of the eminent botanist under whose charge they then were. The then President of the Royal Society, Sir Humphrey DAVY, acted for the Public in that negotiation; but some delays intervened, so that it was not brought to a close until nearly the end of the year 1827.

At that date, the transfer was effected. Mr. BROWN became the head of the Botanical Department of the Museum, and his accession to the Staff added honour to the institution—in the eyes of all scientific Europe—as well as eminent advantage to the public service. Mr. BROWN acted as Keeper until nearly the time of his decease. He died in the year 1858, full of years and of botanical fame.

The Library of Sir Joseph BANKS comprised the finest collection of books on natural history which had ever been gathered into one whole in England. It was also pre-eminently rich in the transactions, generally, of learned societies in all parts of the world; and there is a masterly Catalogue of the Collection, by Jonas DRYANDER, which was printed, at Sir Joseph’s cost, in the years 1798–1800. [Sidenote: THE BANKSIAN LIBRARY.] That Catalogue, I venture to hope, will, some day, become—with due modification—the precedent for a printed Catalogue of the whole Museum Library—vast as it already is, and vaster as it must needs become before that day shall have arrived.

[Sidenote: THE BANKSIAN HERBARIA.]

The Banksian Herbaria comprise BANKS’ own botanical collections in his travels, and those of CLIFFORT, HERMANN, CLAYTON, AUBLET, MILLER, JACQUIER, and LOUREIRO, together with part of those made by TOURNEFORT, the friend and fellow-botanizer of SLOANE, and the author of the _Corollarium_. They also include many valuable plants gathered during those many English Voyages of Discovery which, from time to time, BANKS’ example and his liberal encouragement so largely fostered. From the Collections now seen in the Botanical Room of the British Museum not a few of the great works of LINNÆUS, GRONOVIUS, and other famous botanists, derived some of their best materials. These Collections are at present under the zealous and faithful care of Mr. John Joseph BENNETT, long the assistant and the friend of BROWN.

[Sidenote: BRIEF NOTICE OF SOME OTHER NEARLY CONTEMPORANEOUS
ACCESSIONS.]

Among nearly contemporaneous accessions which would well merit some detailed notice, were the space for it available, are a valuable assemblage of Marbles from Persepolis, which had been collected by Sir Gore OUSELEY, and were given to the Museum by the Collector, and a small but choice Collection of Minerals from the Hartz Mountains, given to the Public by King GEORGE THE FOURTH. The Persepolitan sculptures were received in the year 1825; the Minerals from the Hartzgebirge, in the year 1829.